Although Oxford wins hands down when it comes to screen connections, Cambridge can also boast a few notable names of its own. Among the most intriguing of its graduate film-makers is Jon Sanders, who trained at the Slade School of Art under Keble alumnus, Thorold Dickinson, who was this country's first ever university professor of film. Since debuting impressively with the offbeat Western, Painted Angels (1999), Sanders has developed his penchant for improvisation and long takes in the `Kent Trilogy', which is made up of Low Tide (2008), Late September (2012) and Back to the Garden (2014). Now, however, he has opted to venture further afield, to the Cathar country of southern France. for A Change in the Weather, an exploration of the creative process that decidedly bears the influence of Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer.

Theatre director Dan (Bob Goody) has brought his company to a Languedoc cottage to workshop a new play. Wife Lydia (Anna Mottram) does a hot seat session, with the other cast members posing questions that she has to answer in character. However, she loses her composure when asked what she bought her husband for his last birthday and she discusses her flustered reaction while Dan takes a bath. They agree that there's always a risk involved in starting a new project and reassure each other that they have done the right thing in taking the ensemble out of its usual milieu in order to seek inspiration.

Coming to terms with a romantic break-up, Kalle (Meret Becker) is certainly glad to be away from home and she chats to Lydia about the pain of rejection and the anguish of starting again. Lydia admits that her 38-year marriage has not been without its ups and downs and concedes to have been lucky that their brief hiatus brought Debbie (Seonaid Goody) into their lives. But she is also feeling slightly stressed, as she gets up in the night to fall asleep on the carpet downstairs and Skypes her unease to her friend, Jo (Emma Garden).

Fresh from gazing over the landscape that he feels accepts him, Dan looks on as Debbie operates a puppet of a man with a blank foam face and Kalle, Monica (Maxine Finch) and Lydia act out encounters to the accompaniment of Aidan (Douglas Finch) on the piano. No one speaks, as they contemplate the emotions that the exercise has generated. Lydia wanders around the cottage and examines a wall decoration made by Bea (Tanya Myers). She tells her how much she misses her, as Bea fashions a talisman for James (Stephen Lowe), who appears to be in love with her. However, as the camera pans to focus on Lydia and returns to the empty chair, it's clear that Bea has merely been a figment of her imagination.

Up in her room, Monica tries to teach Dan to dance and her smooth swaying to the rhythm contrasts with his awkward angularity. He throws himself into the task, however, and recalls his only dancing lesson as a youth before kissing her on the forehead in gratitude. Out in the garden, Lydia asks James how he is coping with Bea's loss and hopes that her cottage goes to someone who appreciates it rather than a flash corporate lawyer. He asks about the play and she explains that it's about a man named Bernard assessing his relationship with his wife Elsa, who is played by three different actresses. She thinks it's going well and nods when he suggests that the search for meaning is crucial and that they will only really know what sort of story they have when they reach the end of the process.

Kalle works on a song with Aidan, while Monica talks to Dan on the settee. As Lydia joins them, Kalle starts playing a saw with a bow and everyone applauds when they finish. A short time later, Lydia seeks out Dan with an idea for the play. She asks how Bernard would feel if Elsa died before him. Responding in character, he insists that he would miss her as a lover, companion and partner in working crime. But she avers that men always find new women after they have mourned and she dismisses his protests that he would be too devastated by his loss to look for anyone else. Suddenly, Lydia asks if he is replying as Dan or Bernard and takes umbrage when he complains that she always manages to blur the line between their art and their lives. However, they break off their conversation to go into a cellar or shed, where Lydia sits as Dan tidies away the clutter on the floor.

Lydia lies on a rock with Bea and jokes that James is rather enjoying the attention he is receiving in his bereavement. Bea luxuriates in the sun and assures Lydia that dying is easy. But it's living that most seems to be bothering her and she uses an improv session with Monica playing the fortysomething Elsa to ask how she feels about Bernard having so many women fawning over him because he is a successful writer. She replies that she is confident of his fidelity. But, as the camera pans to show Dan and Kalle listening to the exchange, he seems uncomfortable with Lydia's line of questioning, as it seems to imply that she thinks something is going on between Dan and Monica. But Kalle seems less anxious after Monica declares her love (although it's not clear whether she is herself or Elsa when she speaks).

James shows Kalle around the vicinity and describes how Cathar heretics were persecuted by the French authorities and how a developer once found a 13th-century body while digging up the ground. Nearby, Dan watches Lydia wandering across a field and retreats before she can catch up with him. She is the one to exit, however, when Kalle comes to confide about being nervous about her imminent hot seat inquisition. But Dan assures her that she is a fine actress and will handle the situation with aplomb.

Following scenes of Dan watching Lydia dancing with the marionette, Aidan, Kalle and Monica playing the rims of wine glasses and Lydia coming across Bea during a walk in the woods, Dan waves goodbye to Debbie and her young daughter. He wanders into Kalle's Q&A and has the idea for her to switch from being 21 to answering as the oldest Elsa. She fends off questions about Nature and isolation and whether she has wasted her life by being Bernard's wife and collaborative sidekick. As the camera pans past Aidan to settle on Dan, Lydia and Monica, it returns to Kalle, as she claims that life is about little things not grand emotions and doubts whether she and Bernard still love each other.

Lydia Skypes with Jo again and they talk over each other, as Lydia confesses to behaving badly and being a bit all over the place. Jo is awaiting the birth of a grandchild, but feels worried about her friend. As she logs off, Lydia stares directly into the lens with a look of regretful resignation. She finds Dan at the kitchen table and informs him that she no longer loves him in a passionate way and wants to split up so they can both have a chance of finding happiness before it's too late. He is stunned and insists that he still feels the same as he always has. But Lydia suggests he is simply used to having her around and urges him to see that she feels lonely and deserves to move on because she can't keep suppressing her emotions merely to keep him from being unhappy.

As Dan sobs, Kalle seeks out Lydia and hysterically remonstrates with her for hurting him and throwing away 40 years of togetherness. Lydia tries to apologise, but Kalle resists her touch and storms off in great distress. Yet, she snaps back into performance mode that evening, when she dons a white sailor shirt to sing `My Melancholy Baby' with Aidan. The camera pans to Dan, Monica, James and Lydia watching her, as Bea joins in the final refrain before Kalle takes her flirtatious bow. Later, Dan and Lydia sit on the step at dusk listening to the bird song.

The next morning, Lydia meets Bea as the wind begins to whip up. Bea whispers that she has kept her promise and reminds Lydia that everyone leaves in the end before darting away. Back at the cottage, Monica and Kalle pack up the props, as Dan waves off Lydia in a taxi. As he wanders back indoors, Bea watches sadly before slipping out of shot.

Expanded from an idea by Sanders and Anna Mottram, this has much in common with the Kent triptych in terms of mood and pacing. Yet, while the action is sensitively staged in the best Joanna Hogg manner, it adds little fresh insight to Low Tide's ruminations on the lingering legacy of memories, Late September's exploration of a long-married couple reaching a crisis point and Back to the Garden's discussion of a theatrical twosome's life overlapping with their art.

It hardly helps that Sanders provides no backstory for the secondary characters, as they either distract from the central plot strand or merely act as ciphers to move it along. Tanya Myers and Emma Garden are particularly poorly served in this regard, as they obviously matter more to Mottram than Meret Becker and Maxine Finch, who never feel more than hired members of the troupe, despite their respective song and dance interludes. Yet, we never learn anything about Myers's demise or why she and Mottram are so close (are they sisters, as the final conversation seems to imply?). Moreover, we never see Mottram interact with Seonaid Goody as someone other than a puppeteer, which seems odd as it would appear that she has never really forgiven Bob Goody for the indiscretion that had threatened to drive them apart a quarter of a century earlier. The cast and cinematographer David Scott are to be commended for their estimable efforts. But Sanders struggles to avoid contrivance in interweaving the threads of life and artifice, while the lack of emotional depth makes it increasingly difficult to care what happens to either Mottram and Goody or their tiresomely superficial production. Consequently, for all the film's sincerity, it often feels self-conscious. Moreover, it lacks the subtlety and knowing wit that a Rivette, Rohmer or even an Ingmar Bergman would have imparted to a similar scenario.

Actor-turned-director Martin Provost made a fine impression with the biopics Séraphine (2008) and Violette (2013). But while he sought to get under the skin of painter Séraphine Louis and novelist Violette Leduc, he is content to provide surface sketches of the characters created for Catherines Deneuve and Frot in The Midwife. Released in France as Sage-femme, which means both `midwife' and `demure woman', this represents a marked change of pace for both the glamorous Deneuve and the versatile Frot, who was last seen warbling discordantly in a César-winning display in Xavier Giannoli's Marguerite (2015). But, while the leads enliven the engaging, if eminently predictable central storyline, Provost struggles to breath similar life into the subplots. Catherine Frot is a midwife in a small Parisian clinic that is facing closure because it can no longer compete against bigger hospitals offering state-of-the-art facilities. She delivers babies with a calm professionalism with colleagues Marie Gili-Pierre, Élise Oppong and Jeanne Rosa, but can't make up her mind what to do with her future. Cycling home to Mantes-la-Jolie after another long shift, Frot gets a nudge in a new direction from a phone call from Catherine Deneuve, who had vanished from her life some 35 years earlier after she had terminated a romance with Frot's father, who had promptly committed suicide.

Against her better judgement, she travels across Paris to where Deneuve is staying in a friend's apartment. Wandering around in her nightwear, Deneuve informs Frot that she has an inoperable brain and coaxes her into lunching at a nearby café. She tries to chat about old times and is genuinely shocked when Frot breaks the news that her father shot himself in the heart soon after Deneuve had walked out on them. Fighting back the tears, Deneuve gives Frot a ring that her father had given her and hopes that they can see each other again.

Dropping the ring in a drawer, Frot throws herself into her work and tending her allotment, where she turns down an offer of some seed potatoes from trucker neighbour Olivier Gourmet. She also rejects an invitation to work at the new `baby factory' and tosses a bouquet sent by Deneuve into the Seine. However, her world is shaken again when medical student son Quentin Dolmaire turns up at the allotment with girlfriend Pauline Parigot and announces that she is going to be a grandmother. Cross with herself for being pragmatic rather than happy, Frot worries that they will fritter away their career opportunities. But Gourmet tries to cheer her up, as they sit down to a picnic and watch the geese fly overhead.

Scared by the results of her latest scan and the prospect of undergoing a radical new treatment in Louvain, Deneuve asks Frot to lunch. She raises funds in a backstreet card game and appals her teetotal vegetarian guest by ordering a large steak with a bottle of red wine. Urging her to stop feeding her cancer rather than making plans for her funeral, Frot gets upset when Deneuve reveals that she would like to leave her some money to atone for past pain. Indeed, she storms out of the restaurant and gives Deneuve the slip after she tries to explain that she had left her father because he had wanted to quit being a swimming champion and settle down in the country.

However, she is scarcely cheered up by a visit to Dolmaire, as he informs her that he would rather be a midwife than a surgeon. Distraught after losing a baby at birth, Frot allows Gourmet to take her for a walk to the edge of an escarpment overlooking the valley. They sit on a rock and eat caviar from a tin and she asks his advice about what to do with Deneuve. He says he would cross the road to avoid someone who had betrayed him and tries to kiss her. But Frot gets flustered and turns away.

Yet she waits at Deneuve's bedside after she has treatment and allows the doctor to believe that she is her daughter. She agrees to take care of her at home, even though she is miffed by the fact that Deneuve had lied to her about being an Hungarian princess, when she was really the daughter of a concierge and a nightwatchman. Frot also feels exploited when Deneuve asks her to detour and write out five €1000 cheques to her friend, Mylène Demongeot. But she gets tipsy on port and gets the giggles when bumping Gourmet's car twice in trying to pull away. Moreover, she borrows some of Deneuve's lipstick and perfume and not only kisses Gourmet on returning his keys, but also leads him into her shed to consummate their relationship.

Her situation changes again the next day, however, when Deneuve is forced to move out of her lodgings and Frot agrees to let her stay in her room. She buys some fancy food with her card game winnings, but feels unwell after climbing four flights of steps and Frot has to ask Gourmet to keep an eye on her while she goes to work for the last time. Deneuve gets up in the night to sway gently to a Serge Reggiani album and Gourmet is sceptically amused by her airs and graces. But Frot has another brush with her past when Pauline Etienne staggers in from the rain to give birth and reveal that Frot had donated blood to keep her alive 28 years earlier and she apologises for not having come to thank her before.

She gets home to find Deneuve and Gourmet singing along to Léo Ferré and she snaps at Gourmet when he chides her for not letting Deneuve have milk in her coffee. He sidles away when she asks him to leave and Deneuve admonishes her for being so brusque. But she promptly has a dizzy spell and Frot helps her to the bed, where they doze off together. Indeed, apart from a brief tryst with Gourmet in the potting shed, Frot becomes inseparable from Deneuve and they look at old slides of her father at the peak of his competitive prowess. Frot also reveals that he only married her mother because she was pregnant and that she remains angry five decades later. Dolmaire arrives with baby scans and Deneuve is so taken aback by his similarity to his grandfather that she kisses him goodbye with unexpected fervour.

Determined to pay off her debts, Deneuve tries to pawn a watch to go gambling. But she passes out in the shop and Frot is cross with her for taking up smoking again. However, Deneuve would rather die now than have her wings clipped and she jumps out of the car and strops off into the town. Frot runs after her and gives her the ring to pawn and kisses her because her father always used to say that she was the best kisser he had ever known. They go to the allotment and Deneuve has a moment of disoriented tranquility on the riverbank looking at a partially submerged rowing boat before Gourmet shows up in his lorry to take them for a spin. He lets Deneuve take the wheel and she jokes that this would have been the perfect life for a peripatetic like herself. But, as Frot snuggles up to Gourmet in the top bunk in Dolmaire's room, she feels something is amiss and finds a note from Deneuve thanking her for her kindness and wishing her family well for the future.

Frot applies for a job at the new hospital, but is so put off by administrator Audrey Dana's profit-driven pitch that she walks out. Gourmet promises to support any decision she makes about her future, as they drive to the allotment. While he notices that the rowing boat has sunk, Frot opens an envelope containing her father's ring and a piece of paper bearing a single lipstick kiss. She looks into the sky and listens to the breeze rustling the tree tops, with a resigned acceptance that, this time, Deneuve has gone for good and that she will possibly never learn her ultimate fate.

Provost clearly has the Cukor touch when it comes to directing actresses, as Frot and Deneuve follow Yolande Moreau and Emmanuelle Devos in delivering impeccable performances in this bittersweet saga. Deneuve particularly revels in the opportunity to play an ageless wild child, who refuses to take responsibility for anything, including her own health. She retains her essential glamour, but cagily suggests the struggles she has had to endure in staying one step ahead of her creditors and discarded lovers. By contrast, Frot epitomises prim proficiency, as she tries to do her best for her son and her patients. Wearing her professional and personal principles on her sleeve, she could easily be a dull duck. But, as she allows herself to trust her emotions (and other people) again, it's possible to see flickers of the fun-loving teenager who had existed before Deneuve decamped.

The subplots involving Dolmaire and Gourmet are less engrossing, however, as neither character is particularly well delineated. Nevertheless, one is left with the comforting feeling that they will take good care of Frot as she re-finds her feet. Indeed, Gregoire Hetzel's tinkly score should leave no one in any doubt about the happy ever after. But Provost largely avoids sentimentality, even when the narrative takes one of its numerous melodramatic twists. With the exception of some poignantly intimate footage of real-life births, he also keeps Yves Cape's camera at a respectful distance to bind the characters into their surroundings. Yet, for all the craft and nuance, this never quite tugs on the heartstrings.

Now aged 83, Shirley MacLaine has a decade on Deneuve and also has considerably more experience of playing cantankerous eccentrics. But few do it better and she takes up where she left off in Michael Radford's Elsa & Fred (2014) in Mark Pellington's The Last Word, a study of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder that overdoses so conspicuously on quirky feel-good during the initial stages of Stuart Ross Fink's debut screenplay that it struggles to make its serious points once the ebullient MacLaine starts to run out of steam.

Having once run a successful advertising agency in the fictitious Californian town of Bristol, Shirley MacLaine is now rattling around her perfectly maintained home. She has a gardener and a cook, but feels she trims hedges and cooks eggs better than they do. But, with nothing to occupy her (apart from her obsessive-compulsive tics), she decides to end it all with some sleeping pills and a bottle of red wine. When this fails to do the trick (and she has to endure some snarky questions from a doctor who has no idea about her former status), MacLaine makes a second attempt at the dinner table. However, she knocks over her glass and, in trying to mop up the wine with the local newspaper, her attention latches on to the cliché-strewn contents of the obituary page.

Determined to prevent a hack from misrepresenting her life, MacLaine goes to the Bristol Gazette and coerces editor Tom Everett Scott into introducing her to obit writer Amanda Seyfried, so that she can dictate the terms of her eulogy. As a cocky twentysomething who has never heard of MacLaine, Seyfried dislikes being told what to do and scours the list of names MacLaine has suggested for interviews with disdain. But Scott is hoping that MacLaine will remember the struggling paper in her will and orders Seyfried to knuckle under.

Ex-husband Phillip Baker Hall warns Seyfried that shes on a fools errand because no one will have a good word to say about MacLaine, especially her estranged daughter, Anne Heche. A montage follows in which everyone from MacLaine's hairdresser and gynaecologist to the local priest complains about her and she struggles to write a piece in time for MacLaine's deadline. Naturally, she is furious with the platitudes and faint praise to which Seyfried has to resort and orders her off the premises.

But MacLaine is not one to give up easily and she consults obituaries in a bundle of newspapers from across the country and barges into Seyfried's bedsit late at night to announces that there are four parts to a successful notice. In addition to being loved by their family and respected by their co-workers, a lauded subject has to have helped someone less fortunate than themselves and caught the imagination through a wild card trait. However, MacLaine is aware that she falls short in all departments and invites Seyfried to help her shape a legacy rather than merely transcribing it.

The next day, MacLaine gives a talk to some underprivileged girls at the community centre run by Valeri Ross about taking risks in order to fulfil potential. Much to her surprise, Seyfried finds it strikes a chord and she admits to father Steven Culp that she has never forgiven her mother for walking out on them to realise her own dreams. She also admits that she is struggling to find anyone to publish her essays and sits staring at the globe that her mother gave have, which she finds out in the garage. But MacLaine doesn't believe in waiting for things to happen and she returns to the community centre to seek out foul-mouthed nine year-old AnnJewel Lee Dixon, who has little time for do-gooding white people. Nevertheless, she reins in her curses when MacLaine suggests they lead strangers to draw false conclusions and Seyfried begins to see another side of MacLaine when she finds her record collection and listens to her extolling the virtues of independent radio stations in the 1960s.

When Joel Murray shows up with a CCTV recording of how MacLaine was turfed out of her own company by the suits who feared her, Seyfried also gets an insight into how much people resented MacLaine for refusing to play the little woman in a man's world. However, as KOXA morning DJ Nikki McCauley is about to discover, MacLaine is also prepared to ride roughshod over women, too, as she charms station manager Thomas Sadoski with her knowledge of The Kinks and her insistence that the secret to good presenting lies not in chat but in the sequencing of tracks. Pulling a trolley containing MacLaine's vinyl collection, Dixon is highly impressed with the way she treats people to get what she wants. But Seyfried is astonished to hear her on the airwaves and rushes round to the station, where she is swept off her feet by Sadoski (who is her hero).

Pleased with herself for hooking Seyfried and Sadoski up, MacLaine proceeds to crash their date after Murray shows her the CCTV clip and she gets drunk. Straddling a bar stool, MacLaine taunts Seyfried about her timidity as a creative artist and causes her to storm out when she suggests she wants to write about herself but doesn't have the first idea about the subject matter. As they walk, Seyfried explains that she used to play a spin-and-point game with the globe and she named her book Andalucia Now after the last place she chose before her mother deserted her. He tries to reassure her that she will make it, but they bid goodnight and go in different directions.

This recollection makes Seyfried determined to find out about MacLaine's relationship with Heche and she bundles her and Dixon into her car for visit her. They bop along to a mixtape and MacLaine thanks Seyfried for bullying her into seeing her daughter again. However, when they meet in a posh restaurant, it soon becomes clear that Heche is as much a control freak as her mother and Seyfried and Dixon look on in awed silence as they chip away at each other. Confessing to having OCPD, Heche informs MacLaine that she is now a top neurologist with two sons and invites her to meet them. But MacLaine bursts out laughing (she is only amused when she knows she's in the wrong), as she realises that Heche is content and that she must have been a good mother after all because she has avoided the recurring nightmare of stifling her child.

Exasperated by MacLaine's hysterics, Heche stalks off and they head for home. However, the car breaks down and they have to stay at a roadside motel with its own nature trail. MacLaine takes Seyfried and Dixon for a walk by lamplight and they go for a moonlit swim in the lake. She feels relaxed for the first time in ages, while Dixon and Seyfried bond over the shared loss of a parent who has missed out on seeing how awesomely they have turned out. But the moment they return to Bristol, MacLaine is informed by charmless doctor Todd Louiso that she has an overworked heart that can't be treated and which could fail at any minute. She summons Seyfried to break the news and suggests that she gets on with the obituary.

The next day, MacLaine goes to see Hall to ask why their marriage failed. They begin bickering over old feuds before she compliments him on being a good fater. They cuddle, as do MacLaine and Seyfried when she reads her essays and tells her that she needs to start writing as a woman and not a girl with fantasies. Seyfried complains that her life is so much duller than MacLaine's and admits to putting off finishing the obituary because she doesn't want this chapter to end. On her show, MacLaine tells her listeners to make the most of their time and always try to do something meaningful while they have the chance.

Acting on her own advice, she goes to her old office and hires a tow-truck to yank her initial off the wall from the company logo. But, as she celebrates with wine and music with Seyfried and Dixon, MacLaine slips away after putting their road trip selfie among the family photos on the sideboard. Seyfried starts to read the obit at the funeral, after it's announced that MacLaine has left a bequest to the Gazette, her records to KOXA and her house to become a library. But she chokes on the words and declares that MacLaine was misunderstood, as she just wanted people to follow her tough example of being the best they could be.

As Seyfried jets off to `Waterloo Sunset' to find herself in Andalucia (on a ticket that MacLaine has bought for her), the film ends with the message that we should approach each day as though it matters and be prepared to risk failure in the hope that we will live well enough for people to remember us after we're gone. It's hardly the most profound of statements, but they rarely are in this kind of fortune cookie cinema. Nevertheless, Pellington and Fink make their point without the excess of schmaltz that initially had seemed inevitable after they had sprung the clumsily telegraphed surprise of cutting MacLaine down in her rejuvenated prime. Luckily, she is far too good an actress to be fazed by such a whoppingly melodramatic gesture and she carries off her death scene with understated aplomb. Unfortunately, Seyfried's big speech is ruined by Fink's crass sentimentality and boorish use of vulgarities in a church. But she makes a capable foil for MacLaine, even though her characterisation is so frustratingly thin that she is frequently upstaged by the perky Dixon (whose moxie just about keeps the character from being racially condescending). Her fascination with southern Spain seems a specious as the romance with Sadoski, but she feels like a fully fleshed human compared to the other ciphers keeping the convoluted plotline clunking along.

The production values are rather unremarkable. But, disregarding Nathan Matthew David's saccharine score, there's plenty of interesting diegetic music on the soundtrack, even though a tad too much of it would appear to be outside the orbit of even the hippest octogenarian. But that's the benefit of casting a star of Shirley MacLaine's calibre. She still possesses plenty of that old Hollywood magic that can make you believe almost anything.

Among the potential pitfalls of any sporting biopic is the star's inability to emulate convincingly the subject's skill levels. Countless movies about boxing, baseball, cricket and football have fallen foul of these discrepancies between the audience's memories of a hero in his heyday and their opinion of his stand-in's efforts to throw a punch, hit a ball or dribble past five opponents before curling an unstoppable shot into the postage stamp.

Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen rank among the all-time greats, but you would never know it from watching Joel Gretsch and Bruce McGill in Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) or Jim Caviezel and Jeremy Northam in Rowdy Herrington's Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (2004). Similarly, James Paxton and Matthew Knight do Harry Varden and Francis Ouimet a profound disservice in Bill Paxton's The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005). But Peter Mullan and Jack Lowden scarcely make a better fist of things as Old and Young Tom Morris in Jason Connery's adaptation of Kevin Cook's tome, Tommy's Honour.

When Times journalist George Atwood, Jr. (Benjamin Wainwright) pays Old Tom Morris (Peter Mullan) at St Andrews golf course, he credits him with founding the Open Championship and with being one of the pioneers of the game. But Old Tom is only interested in telling the story of his son, Tommy (Jack Lowden), who picked up the game while watching his father caddy and give lessons to the red-coated toffs at the Royal and Ancient. Mother Nancy (Therese Bradley) disapproves of him wasting his time on the course and prefers him to keep an eye on siblings Lizzie (Kylie Hart), Jack (Max Coussins) and Jamie (Dylan Nelson). But no soon is he out of church on a Sunday than the 15 year-old Tommy is on the links with pals David Strath (Max Deacon) and James Hunter (Paul Tinto) to show them how to play a chip with backspin.

Club captain Alexander Boothby (Sam Neill) asks Old Tom to caddy for him in an upcoming competition and chides him for careless putting in a wager match against Willie Park (Ian Pirie), as it cost him £60 in bets. But Tommy has no intention of being a lackey like his father and turns down the offer to caddy for Boothby and vows to make a living as a professional player and not a plaything of the rich. However, Old Tom knows that his powers are waning and he heeds the advice of a senior club member to let Tommy loose and start earning his keep.

At the Open at Prestwick in 1868, Tommy hits a hole in one en route to taking the title, which he defends for the next two years. Old Tom proudly announces that he can keep the champion's leather belt and journalist George Attwood (Paul Reid) asks Tommy what he plans to do now he has conquered Scotland. Blackheath course captain Major Molesworth (Peter Ferdinando) tries to lure him south with promises of sizeable tips. But, even Tommy has been smitten at first sight by waitress Meg Drinnen (Ophelia Lovibond), he knows he wants to make his own way and he is all set to leave for London before Old Tom puts his foot down and orders him to stay in St Andrews to ensure he wins enough to keep a roof over their heads.

At Musselburgh in 1870, a match between the Morris and Park clans becomes highly territorial and Tommy ends up scrapping with locals intent on cheating to win their bets. He tells Hunter that he is tired of playing by the old rules. But he gets distracted by spotting Meg across the marketplace and is anything but deterred when she tells him that she is 10 years his senior and has no intention of stepping out with him. However, when he turns down an invitation from his friends to visit a brothel, Tommy pays Meg a nocturnal call and she smuggles him to her room above the restaurant.

Recognising that it cant do any harm to have an employee romancing a celebrity, her boss allows her to go and watch Tommy play in the rain. But, while he loses out in the 1873 open to Tom Kidd (Jonny McLeish), he feels emboldened after a picnic with Meg to visit Boothby at his home and announce that he will no longer play for tips out of their winnings. Instead, he will receive a fee in advance and will return to them an amount that he sees fit after his exertions. Boothby orders him out and snaps that he will never be a gentleman. But he is forced to hand over the cash after Tommy bursts into the clubhouse before an exhibition against Strath and so shames the members that the secretary hands over a wad of notes and Tommy gives Boothby his cut after he is beaten.

Tommy uses his winnings to buy Meg a dress and he asks what she thinks of love while eating cake during a train ride. She says she sets no store by it. But Nancy has been listening to gossip and learns from the local Presbyterian pastor, AKH Boyd (James Smillie), that, some years earlier, she had given birth to an illegitimate child, who had lived just three weeks. While Tom and Tommy pose for photographs for an Attwood article on their dominance of golf, Nancy goes to see Meg's impoverished mother and, when Tommy returns after beating an archer in a distance and accuracy contest, she and Tom lay down the law. However, he ignores her and proposes to Meg, who accepts and they marry in a neighbouring church in the absence of his parents.

Tom is more prepared to accept Meg and throws himself into designing the course at Carnoustie while Tommy makes his mark in Blackheath. He is now such a big name that he and Strath go on a tour of major courses in Scotland and England and play against each other or local pros for cash. Old Tom fears the game he knew is beginning to change. But holds his counsel, as he is impressed by the way that Meg reunites the family by talking Nancy into attending a Hogmanay supper. He even leads his brood out of church when Boyd rails against those who pursue wealth and seek to rise above their station. Moreover, he steps into the breach when Strath breaks his arm and Tommy needs a partner against Willie and Mungo Park (John Walker Gray) at North Berwick in 1875.

Leaving Meg in Lizzie's care, Tommy takes the train with his father and their pals and the tension crackles on the first tee. But Old Tom belies his reputation as a shaky putter to knock in a couple of hole winners and the mayor acting as referee has to suspend play when a fight breaks out among the gallery. As he awaits the resumption, Old Tom receives a telegram. However, he keeps the contents secret until they win on the last hole and they dash back to St Andrews by boat because Meg has gone into labour. Tommy remonstrates with his father on the journey for playing on when something much more important than golf was happening and he is crushed to get home to discover both his wife and his son have died.

Heartbroken and drunk, he cuts down the tree on which he had once carved his name. But he comes out of his grief-stricken reverie to take on Arthur Molesworth (Hamish Ireland) on a snowbound St Andrews. Strath and Hunter have to sober him up on the morning of the contest, which Boothby sends on its way from the clubhouse steps. Seeing his son struggling, however, Old Tom tries to suspend play in the falling snow. But Molesworth, Sr. insists that the game continues and Tommy strides to the next tee questioning his father's sudden belief in forfeiting wagers. He returns to his workshop to put a hot coal in a tin box to warm Tommy's hands, but Strath and Hunter have to help him to his feet when he falls to his knees on the frozen green.

Boothby sneeringly offers Charles Kinloch (Nicky Henson) odds against the local hero, but Tommy wins on the last hole by chipping over the ball that his opponent had deliberately placed to block his putt. Gracious in defeat, Major Molesworth comes to give Tommy a gift. But he dies during the night and Old Tom concludes the story to Attwood, Jr. by stating that his son might have died of a broken heart, but he was the best player of his age.

Closing captions note that Old Tom Morris remains the oldest winner of the Open at 46. He designed around 70 courses and continued to compete until he was 75. However, he also outlived every member of his family before dying in 1908 and never forgot the loss of his son on Christmas Day 1875 at the age of 24, just seven years after he became the youngest ever winner of the Championship.

Such details provide an overdue bit of historical context, when the hierarchical nature of golf in the 1860s should have been outlined much earlier in the piece, along with a distinction between challenge and championship play. But, for all its sincerity, this remains a flimsy tribute to Scotland's greatest golfing dynasty. Settling for `them' and `us' caricatures rather than fully fleshed individuals, screenwriters Kevin Cook and Pamela Marin clumsily seek to give the story a modern relevance. Yet they might have been better advised to focus on the changing face of sport rather than class and society by stressing how hard it was to make a living from golf in a time before sponsorship, media pampering and payday bonanzas.

Perhaps (given the political leanings of Connery's famous father), this is a pro-independence parable designed to show how the ghastly Sassenachs have always striven to suppress the brave-hearted Scots. But it fails in this regard, just as it struggles to work as either a romantic melodrama or an insight into what it feels like to be a son in the shadow of paternal greatness. The performances are solid enough, but they lack the intensity to draw the audience into the patchy plot. Similarly, while the costumes, interiors and golfing conditions pass muster, the slipshod digital effects used to make the balls behave around the greens leave this looking like a teleplay rather than a big-screen spectacle.

Documentarist Steve James will forever be remembered for Hoop Dreams (1994), an epic Oscar-winning account of the efforts of two African-American teenagers from lowly backgrounds to impress the basketball coach of an exclusive Chicago high school. But, while he has often returned to sporting issues in films like Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis (2014), James has frequently focused on American attitudes to crime and punishment. He returned to Illinois for Stevie (2002), in which he sought to understand why an abused kid he had once mentored had gone on to face accusations of child molestation.

The notion of setting an example recurred in The Interrupters (2011), which profiled a group of ex-gang members trying to turn troubled Chicago youths away from violence and echoed the theme of At the Death House Door (2008), which explored why a Death Row chaplain from Texas had joined the campaign to abolish capital punishment. Now, following Life Itself (2014), a deeply personal tribute to Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert, James revisits the notion of injustice in Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, which is this week's offering from the ever-questing Dochouse team. Eighty year-old Thomas Sung watches Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) with his wife, Hwei Lin. He had always admired George Bailey (James Stewart) for trying to help ordinary people realise the dream of owning their homes and he had started the Abacus Federal Trading Bank in New York's Chinatown in 1984 with the same intention. However, on 31 May 2012, Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., announced that Abacus would face 184 charges, including residential-mortgage fraud, falsification of business records and conspiracy. But many felt that, in the wake of the 2008 subprime mortgage crises, the establishment was picking on Sung's company because, while the likes of Citibank Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were `too big to fail', Abacus was `small enough to jail'.

Born in Shanghai, Sung had come to the United States following the Communist takeover and had forged a reputation as a community lawyer in Chinatown. However, as daughters Vera, Jill and Heather reveal, it had frustrated him that banks were eager to open deposit accounts for Chinese customers while being reluctant to extend them loans. Initially, he had earned the trust of the community by offering them safety deposit boxes in which to store their valuables. But Sung had quickly convinced them to open checking accounts and, as the business boomed, he started to broker loans and mortgages. As he grew older, he brought his daughters into the firm, with Jill succeeding him as president and CEO, while Vera (who, like sister Chanterelle, worked in the DA's office) became a director.

Then, in 2009, Jill and Vera became aware that loan officer Ken Yu had gone rogue and title closer Linda Hall recalls that they acted promptly in firing him and bringing in an outside consultant to investigate whether others had been defrauding, stealing and money laundering. When two more junior bankers were exposed, Abacus informed the federally backed mortgage company, Fannie Mae, that some of their business had been compromised. Journalist David Lindorf insists that they acted impeccably, but New Yorker staff writer Yiayang Fan reveals that one customer who had lost their dream house had demanded that Abacus repay their 10% deposit. Suspecting they were in cahoots with Yu, the Sungs told them to make a formal police complaint if they felt the bank had deliberately defrauded them.

They promptly filed their case with at the 5th Precinct station and Polly Greenberg from the DA's Major Economic Crimes Bureau opened a case. Thinking they were as much victims of Yu as their clients, Vera and Jill had co-operated with the inquiry. But, when Chief Credit Officer Yiu Wah Wong refused to be interviewed, Greenberg concluded that the entire department was corrupt and that such was the extent of its activities that those in senior management positions had to know (or, at least, should have known) about it and that they, therefore, were liable for the embezzlement. DA Vance made a great show of handcuffing suspects together and marching them to the streets to the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse. He also called a press conference designed to make him look like a fearlessly crusading defender of the common folk against the fat cats.

While no case was brought against Jill Sung, Yiu Wah Wong and loan supervisor Raymond Tam were among those to face charges and Chanterelle sobs as she explains how she had to resign from the DA's office because her family was being subjected to what she considered to be unfair pressure. Journalist Matt Taibbi from The Divide was also unimpressed by the way Vance frogmarched 16 employees, with Lindorf noting that no one would have dared do the same thing with African-American suspects. Abacus defence attorney Kevin Puvalowski was dismayed by what he deemed a self-promoting photo opportunity that unnecessarily humiliated the people involved, while Wong's lawyer, Sam Talkin, points out that his client and Tam were forced to join the chain gang, even though they had already been charged.

Insisting that they played no part in a decision that was presumably taken for the best of reasons, Greenberg and Vance shrug off the tactics employed as being unfortunate and having nothing to do with them. By contrast, Chanterelle accuses them of arrogance and Lindorf suggests that Vance could make such a show of strength as the Chinese formed a negligible part of the electorate for his post. Activist Don Lee recognised this dismissive attitude as part of a wider contempt for his community and knew Sung and his daughters would not take the slur lying down. TV reporter Ti-Hua Chang suggests Vance picked the wrong people to shakedown, as they were all lawyers and relished the chance to have their day in court.

The trial began on 23 February 2015 and court drawings show the female prosecutor giving her opening statement accusing Abacus of systematically stealing funds from Fannie Mae. The defence countered by citing Abraham Lincoln's riddle, `How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.' An amusing interlude shows the family gathered in Jill's office for a debrief with doctor sister Heather on speakerphone. Everyone talks at once, as they debate the performance of their lawyer. But the sense of togetherness and confidence in the rectitude of their position is readily evident.

Greenberg stresses that they had 10 guilty pleas before the case began, but Lindorf and Talkin note that interrogations often took place early in the morning and exploited the fears of exiles from a police state. Yet, Ken Yu became the star witness for the prosecution and he took to the stand on Day 5. But the defence brought up a taped conversation about gratuities between Yu and Ariel Chi (one who had made the 5th Precinct complaint) and showed that the DA had tried to use this exchange to implicate Abacus in Yu's actions. But Yu kept perjuring himself and Puvalowski and fellow defence attorney Rusty Wing couldn't believe how readily he kept playing into their hands. They recall the jury laughing out loud on several occasions as he tied himself into knots. Indeed, jurors Roman Fuzaylov and Jessica Woodby-Denema recall how astonished they were that Yu appeared so comfortable lying on oath. Yet they had to remain focused on the possibility that the Sungs knew what he was doing.

Digressing away from the trial, Lindorf and Taibbi pick up on the fact that Abacus was prosecuted when the big banks issued $4.8 trillion in fraudulent mortgages. These toxic transactions saw a 555% increase in repossessions, but Neil Barofsky, former head of Mortgage Fraud at the US Attorney's Office, reveals that they couldn't go after them as the collateral consequences for the international financial system were too momentous. Thus, while they wound up paying $110 billion in fines, they received $700 billion in government bailouts. The US economy lost $22 trillion as a result and, with public anger rising, Vance felt that Abacus should have their role in the circus exposed, even though it only had six branches and was the 2651st largest bank in the country. He denies there was any racial motive in victimising the Sungs, even though they were offered no plea bargains or opportunities to pay a fine and move on. As Thomas Sung states, they were told to accept a guilty plea and a fine. But, by standing and fighting, he cast doubt on the motives of the DA's office and the legitimacy of attacking an enterprise situated between a couple of Chinatown noodle bars and a Wall Street behemoth.

As the trial reached Day 12, the prosecution used the office seating plan to insist that Tam must have known what was going on. But customers testify that Yu often met them away from his desk so that he could not be overheard. Indeed, Talkin avers that Wong often refused loans where income couldn't be verified. But Vance declares that Abacus was preying on its clients, even though Sung protests that they had do much to revive a decaying part of the city. Moreover, they had done everything in their power to help find branch manager Carol Lim, after she had absconded with $10 million in 2003. Chang had reported on the run on the bank that left it teetering on the brink of a liquidity crisis before Sung took a bullhorn and reassured customers à la George Bailey.

Hwei Lin was proud of his calmness under pressure, but she admits to disliking banking and wishing that her daughters had not entered its sordid. James sits in on a family pow-wow and Chanterelle voices her frustration at not being listened to because she is the youngest, even though she has knowledge of how Vance operates. During the trial, Jill and Vera tried to juggle daily duties with attending court and they concede that business was slow while Abacus was in the dock. But, as prosecution tried to demonstrate on Day 23 that borrowers like Dong Lin had all behaved honourably in making their applications, the defence proved that many had falsified information and Puvalowski became concerned that the jury would think that the bankers were incompetent for believing so much fabrication. But Sung was also worried that such testimony reflected badly on the Chinese community as a whole.

Yiayang Fan explains that trust rather than paper trails are key to Chinese deal-making and she suggests that many of the borrowers felt they were doing nothing wrong in tweaking the truth while making their applications. She also implies that tax evasion played a key role in the case, as Chinatown's cash economy allowed traders to hide money from the IRS. But Sung didn't feel it was part of his responsibility to police the tax affairs of his clients or to distinguish between gifts and loans. Fan explains that Chinese families are very relaxed about money being repaid, but Greenberg highlights that many of the gift letters they had seized gave bank employees as the donor. But Jill and Vera reveal that he used his Chinese name, Qi Bin Yu, to try and fool them into thinking he was a relative of the gift recipient. He also admitted on the stand that he often tampered with documents after loans had been approved so that he could bypass the system.

But the air of suspicion and uncertainty lingered and impact on the Sung family. Despite knowing her family was innocent, Hwei Lin felt great embarrassment during the trial and often had to bite her tongue when she wanted to shout out to defend the family name in court. Conversely, Thomas remained calm throughout. He is shown chatting with his barber during a haircut and only being bothered by the dryness of the chicken in his sandwich, while the sisters were drawing up a closing statement.

Vance claims that Abacus knowingly sold unsafe transactions to Fannie Mae, who bought them in all innocence. On Day 64, Fannie Mae risk director Susan Roma was cross-examined about the body's ethos and why this prosecution had been brought when only nine of around 3000 loans had been defaulted upon. But, even though Abacus had one of the lowest default rates in the country and Fannie Mae had profited from these deals, the jury was told to concentrate on the fact that many of them had been granted under false pretences and that this was the issue not whether a big institution had lost money. Vance insists that a crime has been committed if he steals from a wallet regardless of whether that money is then repaid. But Jill and Vera see no larceny in helping Fannie Mae make a profit when they had had no knowledge of any fraud and taken steps to remove wrongdoers to ensure their dealings were above board.

Barofsky states that fraud to secure a home might be a crime, but it's not worth wasting state or federal resources to prosecute each case. Vance sniffs at this opinion, but Barofsky suggests this was a butterfly on a wheel case and Puvalowski declares that there wouldn't have been a financial crisis if everyone had been as diligent as Abacus. As a result, he felt there was no point putting Jill on the stand, as Vance and Greenberg hadn't made their case. Wing, however, felt the jury would be swayed by seeing the human face of the company. Following a family conference call (in Jill's absence) it was decided to go to closing statements on Day 67 on 19 May 2015.

In summing up, Puvalowski produces a letter from Fannie Mae to Abacus praising them for being sensitive to the specific needs of Chinatown. He concludes from this that they felt there was no case to argue, but Greenberg counters by saying it is illegal to take risks with other people's money and not tell them. The Sungs dined as a family in a local restaurant before the judge gave instructions to the jury to stick to this case and not try to make a statement about the US banking industry or the effects of the credit crunch.

Deliberations lasted a week, with the jury requesting documents to aid their discussions. The Sungs were asked to attend court each day, with Jill and Vera trying to remain calm while working in their seats. Fuzaylov reveals that one juror wanted to make an example of Abacus on behalf of ordinary people who had been affected by the crisis, while Woodby-Denema discloses that she was one of those who voted for guilty with the jury locked at 8:4 in favour of acquittal. Eventually on Day 10, with one juror needing to see an ailing relative, the judge agreed to force a decision of verdict or mistrial. Woodby-Denema explains that they were instructed to change their minds if they felt the prosecution had failed to make its case on all counts without a shadow of a doubt. And, as a result, Abacus won the day and the Sungs posed for pictures in court to celebrate.

Fuzaylov finds it incredible that Vance felt he had enough evidence to win the case. But, somewhat peevishly, Greenberg insists that Abacus was not exonerated because its guilt had not been conclusively proved. Amusingly, Puvalowski and Wing brand her a graceless loser and few watching this film would disagree that Vance and Greenberg do themselves few favours on camera. In his press interviews after the verdict was handed down, Sung suggested the prosecution had been rooted in prejudice and complained that he and Abacus had been under enormous strain for five years. The victory cost $10 million and Don Lee berates the system for using its power to intimidate the little guy. Sung says going through fire should improve the mettle of his daughters and Jill concludes by hoping she can get back to serving her community.

Closing captions reveal that Vance revoked Ken Yu's witness deal and that he was jailed for six months (with five years probation) for Grand Larceny, Scheme to Defraud and Falsifying Business Records. No other Abacus employee served time and charges against eight were dropped completely. The bank has tightened its compliance practices, but all of the loans cited in the case were either paid off or remain on schedule. But no other bank has been indicted for mortgage fraud. It's not that long ago that the idea of basing a film around a sympathetic banker would have been unthinkable. But Steve James has chosen his subjects wisely, as, while the Sungs are clearly nobody's fools and give little away, they suit the underdog tag. They are canny enough, for example, to play up their status within a tight-knit community and contrast it with the haughty detachment of the establishment suits. But, while their victory makes for deeply satisfying viewing, James might have stamped harder on the fingers of the smugly evasive DA and his team and done more to outline the reaction to their failure and whether they were held to account for the manner in which they pursued the case. He could also have delved a little more deeply into Ken Yu's motivation, while some insight from the odd mainstream financial and/or legal commentator might not have gone amiss.

But, as is always the case, James tells his tale with clarity and control, while capturing the atmosphere of a distinctive locale and making some complex fiscal issues accessible to the novice. One would hope, however, that he would feel compelled to return with a follow-up investigation into Washington's relationship with Wall Street and the wider corporate network. But, if he does, he will have to make his case much more conclusively than he does here and hope that the drama is a touch more provocative.